It’s no secret that the Affordable Care Act isn’t perfect. While more preventive screenings are covered and more Americans now have health insurance than they have in recent history, monthly premiums have sharply risen and taxes have gone up for a lot of Americans.

Donald Trump has repeatedly said that, if elected, he would get rid of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) ASAP. “On day one of the Trump Administration, we will ask Congress to immediately deliver a full repeal of Obamacare,” he says on DonaldJTrump.com, calling the act “terrible legislation.”

Trump supporters have applauded the proposal, but what would happen if the Affordable Care Act were actually repealed?

Under Obamacare, people with preexisting health conditions could no longer be denied health insurance, and the consumer cost of some prescription drugs was greatly reduced or eliminated.

However, monthly health insurance premiums have skyrocketed for many Americans, and others face a fine if they elect not to have health insurance, making this a very controversial law.

Imperfect as it is, repealing ACA would have widespread negative effects.

Health care expert Caitlin Donovan, spokeswoman for the National Patient Advocate Foundation, tells SELF that the ACA “desperately needs to be worked on and reformed” but says it would be “catastrophic to the health insurance market and people’s health if the Affordable Care Act were repealed.”

Sarah O'Leary, founder of Exhale Healthcare Advocates, a national consumer health care advocacy group, agrees, telling SELF that without the ACA, “insurers would execute flimsy, discriminatory and wildly expensive individual and family policies while they laughed their multi-billion-dollar way to the bank.”

Donovan cites a Congressional Budget Office study published in 2015 that found that about 22 million more people would become uninsured next year if ACA were repealed. And she says 14 million of those are people that currently qualify for health insurance under Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a program that provides low-cost insurance to children in families that make too much money to qualify for Medicaid. "That means a lot of children would be without coverage."

Repealing the act would also cause the individual insurance marketplace to disappear, she says, which could impact 18 million people. And those people who get insurance now because of the employer mandate would also be out of luck.

While it’s easy to think that premiums would go down without the ACA, Donovan says they may actually go up. A current ACA rule states that at least 80 percent of premium dollars have to be spent on claims and activities to improve health care quality. Without it, “you would see that number shift to administrative work and CEO salaries,” she says.

In addition, people would no longer be protected against a denial or loss of policy based on preexisting conditions, O’Leary says, so your health insurance company could decide to drop you if you develop cancer. Young adults also wouldn’t be able to stay on their parents’ health insurance policy until the age of 26, she points out, and many of those would likely be uninsured because they can’t afford coverage.

Women and reproductive care would also likely take a hit. Under the ACA, birth control and prenatal care is covered, O’Leary points out, and that could simply go away, making reproductive care unaffordable for some women. Not only that, “insurers could charge women of child-bearing age more for their coverage, or deny them entirely,” she says.

And, while some small business owners have scoffed at having to pay for their employee’s health care, the loss of the ACA (and potentially coverage for these employees), could mean more employee absenteeism because employees may not have been able to afford preventive medicine and develop chronic conditions as a result, O’Leary says.

“Basically, it would destabilize everything,” Donovan says.

Experts admit that the ACA has its flaws and needs to be fixed—and believe that it can be improved without going back to the drawing board.

“The ACA is certainly better than nothing, but it needs to be revised desperately,” says O’Leary. “It has more loopholes than Swiss cheese, thanks in large part to Congress’ inability to revise it and the health care industry’s ability to exploit its weaknesses.”

Medicare and Medicaid have been amended more than a dozen times since 1965, O’Leary points out. “Congress needs to revise the Affordable Care Act with the same fervor instead of treating it like a political football,” she says. “When we’re talking about human life, we should always put the person above the politics.”

Donovan agrees. “There are really good ideas from Republicans and Democrats,” she says. “As long as both sides are participating, there could be reform.”